Friday, February 26, 2016

TAMU Rose Breeding & Genetics Program Update from Dr. Dave Byrne!

Dear Rose Enthusiasts,

We
have had a mild winter here in Texas and the current weather is quite
nice. The predictions for the next week are for us to have low
temperatures in the high to low 50s and
high temperatures in the 70s. Nevertheless, Texas weather is
predictably unpredictable so we will probably be getting more cold
weather before summer rolls around.

In
the program we have been preparing fields for planting rose seedlings,
pruning, planting roses and peaches, and planning for the next set of
rose pollinations. We have recently
received plants from Greenheart Nurseries, Weeks Roses, Star Roses, and
Chamblee’s Nursery and for more will come from Bailey’s Nursery,
Antique Rose Emporium, Francis Roses, Chambersville Heritage Rose
Gardens, and Seville Farms. All these will go into the
Combating Rose Rosette Disease SCRI evaluations plots in College
Station but also with Brent Pemberton in Overton, Texas, Mark Windham at
the University of Tennessee and Tom Evans at the University of
Delaware.

Last
year with our collaborating rose breeders we managed to do about 3,000
pollinations and produce about 5,000 seed which are currently being
stratified/germinated. For this
we need to thank the participating breeders: Christian Bedard of Weeks
Roses, Michele Scheiber of Star Roses and Plants, Ping Lim of Roses by
Ping (Altman Plants), Jim Sproul of Roses by Design, David Zlesak, and
Don Holeman. This year we expect to do even
more pollinations.

Two species that appear to be resistant to RRD are
Rosa palustris and Rosa setigera. Both these are native to North America. We have been fortunate to have collaborators collect
Rosa palustris in West Virginia (Jim Amrine) and South Carolina (Jonathan Windham) and
Rosa setigera from north Texas (Claude Graves and Dean Oswald at
the Chambersville Heritage Rose Garden). We are always looking for more
germplasm for our work.

Our
students have been active in presenting their research. Ellen Roundey,
Shuyin (Sharon) Liang, and Xuan (Jade) Wu presented their research at
the Texas Plant Protection Conference
in and Annual TAMU Horticulture and MEPS poster competition in December
and just last week at the Plant Breeding Symposium. In the poster
competition one has to explain years of research in 2 to 3 minutes to a
panel of judges (professors)…not an easy task!
Shuyin and Jade were winners with first and third place respectively at
the Annual TAMU Horticulture and MEPS competition. Congratulations.

In
January, Muqing (Mandy) Yan traveled to San Diego, CA to attend the
international Plant and Animal Genome meetings and gave an invited talk
entitled, ‘Map Construction in the
Diploid Rose with GBS’. But what is GBS? This means Genotyping by
Sequencing which is an efficient way to generate 1000s of DNA markers to
help us select for specific gene variants that condition traits such as
disease resistance. This technique has been shown
to accelerate the new variety development in other crops. We are now
working towards using it in rose to develop varieties resistant to the
black spot fungus and the rose rosette virus.

At
the meetings of the Southern Region American Society of Horticultural
Sciences, Jon Corser, an undergraduate student working with Ellen
Roundey and Jeekin Lau to count the
chromosomes of roses, gave an oral presentation about their work. He
did a wonderful job. He continues with this work and soon will be doing
pollinations as well.

There are a couple of rose meetings that I would like to mention.

First,
Jen Olson, the Plant Pathologist at Oklahoma State University will be
giving an Update on Rose Rosette Disease at the Tulsa Community College
Northeast Campus on Saturday,
March 5th. She is speaking at the Consulting Rosarian School and Winter
Rose Workshop event sponsored by the South Central District and Tulsa
Rose Society (http://tulsarosesociety.org/Data/ScheduleofEvents2016MC.pdf).
Other talks include several by Don Meyers about pesticide use, Eric
Rebek about insect problems, Don Adlong about soils, pH and fertilizers,
and Carol Shockley about new rose varieties. Registration ends on March 1st.

Second,
Mark Windham and Pam Smith will be talking about their experience and
how to manage the Rose Rosette Disease in Allen, Texas on the 9th of April. This program is organized by
the Collin County Rose Society and the Texas AgriLife Extension Service. See the following link for more information:
http://collin.agrilife.org/…/RoseRosetteEducationSeminarApr…

In
a couple of weeks, I will venture off to the snowy landscape at Michigan State Universitywith four graduate students: Muqing Yan, Ellen
Roundey, Zainab Mansur and Jeekin
Lau. We will be participating in the Annual Meeting of the RosBREED II
project where we will be meeting with fruit and ornamental breeders from
throughout the USA to learn how to use DNA markers to accelerate our
breeding programs. In roses, Dr. Hokanson and
students from the University of Minnesota and our group at TAMU
collaborate to find DNA markers to facilitate the development of black
spot resistant rose cultivars. I will tell you about how the meeting
went in the next Rose Update.

If
you have any questions about our work here at Texas A&M University
or how to support the Basye or Moore Rose Collection and Legacy, the
Rose Breeding
and Genetics program, and our students, please contact me (dbyrne@tamu.edu).
We need
your support for student scholarships and to maintain the many research
gardens needed for an excellent research program. Your support makes
our program possible. I try to post regular updates on the
Rose Breeding and Genetics Facebook and the
Combating Rose Rosette Disease Facebook pages. Please check
them out and like us!